Standard homeowners policies cap jewelry claims at $1,000 to $2,500 — even if you have hundreds of thousands in personal property coverage. Here is what the sub-limit means and how a scheduled floater fixes it.
Mold is one of those home repair problems that starts small and turns expensive fast. A slow pipe leak behind a bathroom wall. A condensation problem in a crawl space. Water intrusion after a heavy rain. Within 24 to 48 hours, mold can begin growing in damp conditions — and by the time most homeowners…
Most homeowners I talk to have no idea what their liability limit actually is. They know they have homeowners insurance. They assume it covers them. And it does — up to a point that most of them have never checked. The standard homeowners policy carries a personal liability limit of somewhere between $100,000 and $300,000….
There is a coverage scenario most homeowners never think about until they are standing in a hotel parking lot with two kids, a dog, and a single bag of clothes, waiting for their insurance company to call back. A fire, a burst pipe, a gas leak, a structural collapse — any event that makes your…
Last spring, I spoke with a homeowner in suburban Atlanta who had just written a $4,700 check to replace her central air conditioning system’s compressor after an electrical surge fried it. She assumed her homeowners policy would cover it. Her adjuster told her it wouldn’t. She called us, and when I pulled up her policy,…
When people think about water damage and homeowners insurance, they usually think about burst pipes or a leaky roof. Those scenarios are well-covered territory. But there is a water damage scenario that catches more homeowners completely unprepared than almost any other: sewage backup. I have worked with homeowners who had thousands of dollars of cleanup…
I’ve sat across the table from dozens of homeowners who thought they were covered for flood damage — until they weren’t. They had homeowners insurance. They’d been paying their premium for years. And when the water came, their insurer told them the same thing insurers have been saying for decades: flood damage is not covered…
Over the past few years, I have worked with homeowners who run everything from Etsy shops to licensed daycare operations out of their homes. And almost every single one of them had the same gap in their insurance — they assumed that because the business was run from home, the homeowners policy covered it. It…
